The present invention relates to a rear door, and more particularly, to a rear door swingably attached to the rear end of a car.
Conventionally, a car is provided with a rear door at its rear end. There are various types of rear doors. A rear door used particularly for a one-box car, a minivan, a hatchback and the like is typically a single, top-hinged flip-up door. This rear door has a resin trim, which is an upholstery component, provided on an inner face facing a vehicle interior side. This trim can improve the appearance of the interior, as well as provides sound insulation, heat resistance, and shock resistance. A trim panel structure for a rear door of a car is known, for example, wherein a hole is formed in a lower end portion of an inner panel of the rear door, and a door operation handle integrally formed with the trim panel is fitted in the hole.
With a flip-up door, when the door is opened, its lower portion flips up. Therefore, depending on the height of a passenger, the passenger sometimes could not reach the outer face of the back door and it was difficult for the passenger to swing the rear door downwards. To solve this problem, for example, a rear door is known that has a pull handle portion formed as a recess running obliquely downwards from an opening formed in an interior-side design surface of the trim toward the rear of a vehicle body. When closing this rear door, with the palm facing the passenger, the passenger grasps the opening of the pull handle portion with fingers from the rear of the vehicle body and pulls the door downward to swing it downward. The passenger then pulls out the hand from the pull handle portion and pushes the outer face of the rear door toward an opening portion in the rear end of the vehicle. Thus, the rear door can be closed easily and safely irrespective of the passenger's height.
However, when the flip-up rear door is fully opened, its lower portion comes to a substantially horizontal position. Therefore, depending on the height of the passenger, the interior-side design surface of the trim sometimes could not be seen from the rear of the vehicle body. In this case, since the passenger could not see the opening of the pull handle portion formed in the interior-side design surface, the passenger would have to find the position of the pull handle portion by bending down below the rear door, which was inconvenient.